Joining the group

To join the group, you will need a Facebook account. Log into Facebook, visit the group page on Facebook and click on “Join”.

You will be asked a few basic questions, we ask these primarily to filter out bots and spam users – so please do complete these as otherwise your application may be delayed or declined.

The group admins are volunteers and we aim for a self-moderating group with minimum rules and administration. However as the group grew we introduced a few rules as follows :-

Do not post anything unrelated to the GA service or other services in the Anglia region.

Please ensure you keep a sense of humour at all times.

Do not make derogatory remarks to other members, you can vent your frustrations of course but remember it is a public group and your comments can and will be seen.

The group is not the place to ridicule others. Surreptitious photographs of other commuters inviting comments about their appearance or anything in general will be removed without warning. Or you could just be a decent person and not post them in the first place. This encompasses everything about fellow commuters, we get that sometimes other people annoy you, but this isn’t the group for airing that.

The group will not condone or allow any threats of violence, verbal abuse or illegal activity (even as jokes) towards GA or other train service staff, elected representatives, or other group members either in person or via social media. You have a right to complain about them, but keep it polite and do not make it personal.

The group has a small team of admins who do this just because we want to make users’ commutes better. We have day jobs, lives, hobbies, and children so we aren’t here all the time. Please act like adults so we don’t have to administrate or moderate much. If threads descend into arguments then we won’t take sides, we’ll just lock them. You can help us by reporting such threads.

GA and National Rail staff are welcome to join, but please declare yourself in your Facebook profile or via the joining questions.

Press are welcome on the condition that they properly engage with the group, and stick around for the long term. Reporters who just want to use the group for ‘doing a hit and run’ or a ‘clickbait’ piece are not welcome. Please speak to one of the admins when joining the group and we will run through these with you, and read the extra rules for press.

No trainspotters or GA apologists allowed.

The group isn’t a democracy, you can and will be removed if the admin team feel that you have breached the rules or are disrupting the group.

Extra group rules for press are as follows, breaching these will result in your immediate removal from the group and a ban on your subsequent rejoining. We may also elect to remove/ban other journalists from your organisation.

If you are looking for material for a story and do a post to solicit it, then you must declare yourself as a journalist and make it clear that responses may be used in print/online.

You must not use anyone’s names without their permission.

You must not take content from other posts and use it as quotes.

You must not take posts/comments out of context or editorialise them to change context.

You must obtain permission before using any photos that users have posted.

The only people who should be classed as spokespeople for the group are admins, other members of the group are not representatives for the group and you will not quote them as group representatives.

Please stay around and work with us to show the bigger picture rather than just doing a quick one-off story and disappearing. Some of us have worked within the National Press for decades, and while we appreciate that deadlines often require you to quickly produce stories there are opportunities to create much bigger and better ones by working with the group for the long term.

If you want any background information on ongoing issues, facts and figures, or franchise terms, then please feel free to speak to one of the admins.